Afternoon Delight

Most soap operas hold no fascination for us, but the occasional presidential news conferences make for riveting afternoon fare. In the latest installment of this long-running series our hunky hero’s torrid love affair with the press runs into some unexpected trouble.

The story opens with the president giving the honor of the first question to the out-going president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, which recently made a point of laughing at all the president’s jokes during its annual dinner and celebrity love-fest, and he assures the reporter that “I’m not mad at you.” After assuring the president that he also isn’t angry the reporter proceeds to ask about the “red line” that the president had declared against Syria’s use of chemical weapons and if it might “risk U.S. credibility if you don’t take military action.” The question seemed quite carefully put, as we would have demanded to know what in the world the president was thinking when declaring an ultimatum he had no intention of ever enforcing, but the president nonetheless seemed rather offended as he launched into a long-winded oration about how Syria’s use of chemical weapons would be a “game-changer” but that “By game changer, I mean that we would have to rethink the range of options that are available to us.” One can only imagine the terror this must have struck in the hearts of the Syrian dictatorship that almost certainly has been using chemical weapons, but the press was too shaken to ask any follow-up questions.

Another reporter was so impertinent as to ask the death of an ambassador and three other Americans in a Libyan embassy that had repeatedly been denied requests for added security, specifically about the widely-reported allegation that whistle-blowers who survived the terrorist attack have been prevented from coming forward, and the president cut the conversation short by explaining that “I’m not familiar with it.” He could have reprised his former Secretary of State’s sneering reply that “What difference, at this point, does it make,” which won rave reviews from the press, so we suppose this claim of ignorance represents an improvement in administration policy.

Although the president was clearly annoyed by such pesky questioning, another reporter requested a response to Republican criticism that the government had been insufficiently vigilant in following up on Russian warnings about one of the men suspected of bombing the Boston Marathon. “It’s not as if the FBI did nothing,” the president huffily replied, “They not only investigated the older brother, they interviewed the older brother.” Satisfied that law enforcement could not have done more, the president set to wondering “was there something that happened that triggered radicalization and actual — an actual decision by the brother to engage in the attacks that we — the tragic attack we actually saw in Boston, and are there things — additional things that could have been done in that interim that might have prevented it?

After a lengthy discourse along these hard-to-parse lines, the president yielded to another question. More pestering ensued, with another reporting noting the legislative butt-kicking the president had received on his gun control efforts and wondering if “you still have the juice to get the rest of your agenda through this congress?” Many commentators were immediately reminded of the “Are you still relevant?” question posed to Bill Clinton back in the golden age of presidential soap operas, and the president seemed rather testy when he responded that “If you put it that way, Jonathan, maybe I should just pack up and go home.” To quickly dash the hopes of many Americans, the president during the nervous laughter that “As Mark Twain said, you know, rumors of my demise may be a little exaggerated at this point.” The president added the “little” and “at this point” to Twain’s witticism, but he made it clear that he still had enough breath for a lengthy gripe about those darned Republicans. Insisting that “right now things are pretty dysfunctional up on Capitol Hill,” the president went on to blame the opposition for the great pain caused by the “sequester” budget cuts, the public’s failure to adequately feel the pain, and their inexplicable resistance to his demands, all seemingly to remind the press that they have no suitable alternative suitors.

The president also renewed a long un-kept promise to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, insisted that all is well the Obamacare program despite its author’s claim of a “train wreck,” expressed hope that millions of illegal Mexican immigrants will soon be able to vote for his party, and offered praise for some little-known, bench-sitting basketball player who has publicly announced his homosexuality. There wasn’t any time for economic questions, the president’s golf-and-party schedule being so very tight, but even without the always-hearted financial arguments the story book romance with the media was clearly strained. Can the relationship be saved? We’ll be eagerly awaiting the next installment to find out.

— Bud Norman

Comforting the Comfortable

There’s an old newspaper adage that a journalist’s job is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” Journalists are so fond of such nonsense that if you spend any amount of time with them you’ll soon grow weary of hearing it. After 35 years of working with newspapers we have vowed that the next time we hear anyone repeating this balderdash we will immediately go in search of a sockful of horse manure with which to pummel him.

It’s not so much how the adage negates a superior notion that a journalist’s job is to accurately report what is going on in the world, without regard to who is comforted or afflicted or by the truth, but rather that it’s so very out of date. The phrase apparently originated with Finley Peter Dunne, who wrote an Irish-accented column as “Mr. Dooley” way back in the good old days of yellow journalism when ethnic humor was respectable and journalists were not, and we wonder what the ink-stained wretch would make of the oh-so-comfortable scribes in attendance at this past Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

You’ve heard of the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, of course, even if you make a point of avoiding all that boring political stuff in the news. The annual black-tie event has joined the Golden Globes awards and the global warming alarmist movement as one of those things that every self-respecting celebrity simply must do, and it now receives the same saturation coverage as any other show-biz event. This year Vanity Fair rushed to the internet with pictures of the “Hollywood A-listers and Washington-insiders” who attended the magazine’s after-party bash at the Kalorama residence of the French ambassador, and even the most staid news outlets were similarly star-struck. New York Magazine found it newsworthy that the First Lady wore a Lacy Monique Lhuillier gown, which is apparently some sort of fancy dress, and it  could not restrain itself from adding that “damn does she look good.”

Each year’s dinner features a monologue by a well-known comedian who is expected to poke fun at both politicians and reporters, thus allowing both groups to demonstrate what good sports and regular folk they are, but tradition also dictates that a gentler brand of humor be employed regarding Democrats. This year the honor went to late-night talk show host Conan O’Brien, who hewed rigorously to tradition. One of his few Obama jokes made mention of the fact that both he and the president attended Harvard University, and he ended with a heartfelt thanks to the president for helping his hometown of Boston “heal” from the bombings at the Boston Marathon. Whatever healing powers the president exerted might not have been necessary if the Federal Bureau of Investigation had been less sensitive to Muslim sensitivities when following up on Russian warnings about the bombers, an aversion to Islamophobia that has been imposed from the very top of levels of government, but O’Brien’s partisan fun-poking should have been expected. We well recall that during the Bush administration O’Brien used to regale his television audiences by doing a presidential imitation that involved mimicking a mentally retarded person and saying “duh,” a Swiftian sort of satire that the proud Harvard man could have just as easily learned on the playgrounds of Kistler Elementary School.

The president also spoke, which is another yearly feature of the event. Tradition dictates that the presidential monologue be self-deprecating, but Obama seems unable to make fun of himself lest it be considered racist. He acknowledged an embarrassing 2-for-22 shooting performance on the basketball court during the White House Easter egg roll, but only as a set-up for a joke about the NBC ratings, and most of the jokes were aimed a political opponents such as a wealthy Republican campaign donor. The watchdogs of the press politely roared, of course, and by all accounts everyone seemed very comfortable.

— Bud Norman

Taking Both Sides

One might have gleaned from the past election an impression that Islamist terrorism had vanished forever after President Barack Obama personally killed Osama bin Laden with his bare hands, but apparently this is not the case. The bombings at the Boston Marathon and the Canadian government’s thwarting of an al-Qaeda plot to commit mass murder on a train heading to the United States are only the most recent events indicating that Islamist terrorism remains a problem.

Thus far the reaction to these events has been largely apolitical, as most of the country remains in one of those moments of post-terrorism unity that punish any attempts at partisan point-scoring, but the necessary arguments about how to proceed will soon commence. Already the well-rehearsed rationalizations are being trotted out in the liberal media, along with the usual hand-wringing about the great Islamophobic backlash that is ever feared but never realized, and the conservative press has begun easing into a full-throated critique of administration policies. All of the familiar points will be reprised, but the debate will be complicated this time around by the shrewdly political nature of Obama’s policies.

Obama has presented himself as a hard-nosed hawk who has continued such Bush-era protocols as indefinite detentions at Guantanamo Bay and the Patriot Act, ordered a surge in Afghanistan and prolonged the withdrawal from Iraq along the Bush timetable, prosecuted a terrorist-killing drone war with a ruthlessness that even Bush didn’t dare, and endlessly reminded the public of bin Laden’s death. At the same time he has cultivated a reputation as the Nobel Peace Prize-winning antidote to that awful cowboy Bush, and the impresario of conflict resolution who ordered a decrease in troop strength in Afghanistan and got us out of Iraq, won over Muslim hearts with his exotic background and eloquent apologias to Islamic culture, and banned such nastiness as the enhanced interrogation techniques that led to bin Laden’s death. As political strategy it has been a stunning success, with critics on both the left and right muted and the non-ideological center well satisfied so long as nothing was blowing up. A radical Islamist shouting “Allahu Akbar” killed 12 people at Fort Hood, Texas, but that was easily dismissed as just another instance of workplace violence, and an Islamist terror group killed an ambassador and three other Americans, but that was in some far-away place called Benghazi, Libya, and the Islamist governments being welcomed into power by the administration were reportedly an “Arab Spring,” so it seemed to be working.

Now things are blowing up, and too close to home for the media to ignore, and the policies don’t seem to be working to anywhere near the extent that the president and his supporters have promised. Specific questions will now be asked about the immigration rules that allowed the suspects into the country, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s aborted inquiries into one of the suspect’s increasing radicalization, the legal procedures being used to try the surviving suspect, and other matters arising from the Boston bombing, but there will also be a broader debate about the totality of the administration’s policies. Some will blame the hard-nosed protocols carried over and expanded from the Bush administration, while others will blame the tendencies to legalism, appeasement, and accommodation, but it will be most interesting to hear Obama defend his combination of the two.

— Bud Norman

Impolite Facts, Impolite Words

All those people who hoped that the Boston Marathon bombers would turn out to be right-wing extremists were doubly disappointed to learn that the culprits were in fact Islamist terrorists. This unsurprising turn of events not only deprives these people of an opportunity to smear all of their ideological opponents as blood-thirsty terrorists, it also obliges them to once again trot out all the familiar bromides about how the acts of certain individuals shouldn’t be held against an entire group.

They’re quite right, of course, that most Muslims are not terrorists. A rote acknowledgement of this obvious fact is by now a rule of polite political discourse, and we are happy to oblige, although the ritual does become tiresome after so much repetition. Knowing that no such stipulations will be required when some arguably right-of-center psychopath inevitably goes off makes the obligation all the more wearying for those of us of a conservative bent, but the contortions of logic and rhetorical acrobatics that the frequent acts of Islamist terrorism require of the liberals must be downright exhausting.

One example of how very embarrassing it can become is found in Saturday’s edition of The Boston Globe, which assures the readers of its terrorized city that “Islam might have had secondary role in Boston attacks.” The piece by staff writer Lisa Wangsness doesn’t posit what might have played the primary role in the attacks, but it does claim to have found a few academic types to bolster its insistence on “a complex picture of the brothers’ religiosity.” A fellow at Harvard University’s Program on Global Society and Security explains that “The story that seems to be developing here is more along the lines of standard alienated man goes out and commits atrocities, much more like the school shootings we’ve seen than organized Islamic insurgency,” and a University of Oxford professor opines that “I think these are two young men who never adapted. It’s a combination of nationalism mixed with self-styled jihadism, and some young men who had a hard time adapting to American culture.” Other reports indicate that the bombers enjoyed comfortable lives in the country that had welcomed them from their war-torn native land, provided them with the best of educational opportunities, and offered them unlimited economic opportunities, much like other Islamist terrorists who have committed similar bombings around the world, but at The Boston Globe this only enhances the complexity. The article acknowledges abundant evidence that by 2012 one f the bombers “had begun dabbling in radical Islamism,” but surely that played on a secondary role in the poor lad’s difficulties in mean America.

Over at the once-prestigious Atlantic Monthly, they don’t seem to care at all if the bombers were Muslim. Writer Megan Garber actually argues — in a piece helpfully headlined “The Boston Bombers Were Muslim: So?” — that the bombers were so much more than just Muslims or terrorists that it would be mistaken to “label” them as Muslim terrorists. After plowing through the same press reports we’ve read about the bombers she takes note of such interesting details as a graduation from the prestigious Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, skateboarding around tony Cambridge, prom dates and athletic exploits, and although it seems to undercut the Globe’s poor-losers-in-an-unfriendly-land theme she seems to find this information every bit as relevant as the fact that they had deeply-held Islamist beliefs and murdered three people and injured scores more with a home-made bomb. Although the brothers are by any definition of the word terrorists, Garber writes that it would be wrong to call them terrorists lest “We turn people into caricatures — we decide they are ‘crazy’ or ‘disturbed’ or ‘ideologically motivated’ or ‘radical’ — so we can distance their actions from our own.”

Dealing with the problem of Islamist terrorism will be greatly complicated if any attempt to describe it in precise and meaningful terms is scolded as “labeling,” but as Garber notes in her closing sentence, “We have to embrace complexity.”

— Bud Norman

A Good Week for Conspiracy Theories

Others might prefer a good old-fashioned whodunit, but for purely recreational reading we relish a good conspiracy theory. They have plots as carefully contrived as any mystery novel, feature villains and heroes every bit as clearly cut, and offer the same refuge from reality with the same reassuring implausibility.

The past week, however, has brought forth more conspiracy theories than even the most avid buff would want. Bombings at the Boston Marathon, ricin-laced letters sent to a senator and the president, an explosion at a Texas fertilizer plant, and the culmination of the gun control debate in a series of Senate votes on Wednesday all had the conspiracy theorists working overtime. There is no reason to believe that any of these events are related, but their unlikely confluence in the span of a few days seems to have heightened the suspicions of the conspiracy theorists nonetheless. Coincidences do no occur in conspiracy theories, a strict convention of the genre, and even the most random dots can somehow be connected.

A quick arrest in the ricin-laced letters case has blunted much of the speculation about the case, although any details that emerge might yet inspire more conspiracy theorizing. The suspect is an Elvis impersonator, a plot twist that the most ingenious mystery novelist could not invent, and thus far it is unclear what motives he might have for his alleged crime. He is reportedly a registered Democrat, which will no doubt come as a disappointment to those eager to blame such events on right-wing extremism, but the choice of a staunchly Republican senator and President Obama as victims suggests a bi-partisan sort of craziness that does not easily lend itself to conspiracy theories. Other reports suggest that the suspect is a conspiracy theorist, however, so perhaps his views will eventually spawn a good legend.

An accident is always a more probable explanation for an explosion at a fertilizer plant than a terrorism attack, especially when the plant is located in such an unlikely target as the small town of West, Texas, but that has not stopped the conspiracy theorists from all sorts of suspicious speculation. That the explosion occurred so soon after the Boston Marathon bombings fueled the speculation, as did the town’s proximity to Waco and it’s upcoming anniversary of the tragic conflagration that resulted when federal agents conducted a raid on a religious cult there, and within hours of the explosion there were several web sites dedicated to the possibility of terrorism.

Terrorism clearly occurred at the Boston Marathon, so all of the conspiracy theorizing has been devoted to identifying a possible culprit. Some are openly hoping that it turns out to be white people with extremist right-wing views, while others are assuming that Islamist radicals are to blame, and thus far neither camp has any real evidence for their theories. Photographs of two possible suspects released Thursday by the Federal Bureau of Investigation are a sort of Rorcshach test for conspiracy theorists, grainy and indistinct enough that one camp will look and see two white men while the other will immediately spot two men of Middle Eastern appearance, and in any case the men are only suspects and their ethnicity provides no proof of their motives. For what it’s worth the men’s rather hip-hop style of clothing strikes us as incongruous with right-wing extremism, but perhaps the right-wing extremists in Boston are more fashion-conscious than the ones we encounter here in the heartland. The debate will rage until some definitive proof emerges, and even then the true believers will continue to insist on their original suspicions.

As with every tragedy of this sort, allegations of a “false flag” government theory are also proving popular. The FBI news conference where the photographs were released was constantly interrupted by one of the more prominent peddlers of this theory, which is based solely on the usual wild conjecture and fevered fear of a government conspiracy behind anything bad that happens, and the notion is also gaining currency on some of the more fanciful talk radio programs. It’s a comforting notion that a nefarious cabal is secretly running the world, at least when compared to the sobering reality that the world is far too vast and complex for even the most diabolical genius to successfully run and tragedy is therefore beyond anyone’s control, and conspiracy theories of this sort will always appeal to the anxious people at both ends of the ideological spectrum. The side that is out of power, as the largely forgotten “9/11 Truth” movement demonstrates, will always be more prone to such conspiracy theories.

Which is not to say that people do not conspire with one another to achieve their common goals, a point that was acknowledged by both sides of the recent gun control debate, but these are usually limited conspiracies conducted in plain view and without any cloak-and-dagger conduct. In a petulant and peevish speech in the White House rose garden Obama seemed blamed the Senate’s failure to pass any of his pet proposals on the “gun lobby” convincing the public that his “common sense” measures were part of a government conspiracy to disarm the citizenry, which is a sort of conspiracy theory itself, and his vice president mocked anyone who doubted his good intentions as a paranoid gun nut and member of the “black helicopter crowd.” There are plenty of politicians and activists who do wish to disarm the citizenry, however, and there are reasons to suspect that Obama is among them, so it isn’t paranoid for those who cherish their gun rights to organize against an organized effort to do away with the Second Amendment.

Guarding against a government’s natural inclination for more power is not the same as suspecting a government plot behind every tragedy, and doing so through the democratic process as in the defeat of the gun control proposals is patriotic rather than treasonous. All these crazy conspiracy theories, alas, tend to discredit the valid ones.

— Bud Norman

Jumping the Gun

The horrific bombings at the Boston Marathon dominated the news again Tuesday, even though there was nothing new to report. There were the sympathetic portraits of the victims and celebratory tales of the kindness and heroism that also occurred, both of which are obligatory rites of journalism in the aftermath of such tragedies, but nothing to answer the crucial questions of who was responsible.

Journalists are obliged to write something about such events, however, and after 35 years of working for newspapers we can attest that most of them are loathe to admit when they have no answers. We’ve had numerous editors over the years who insisted on answers to unanswerable questions, apparently under the impression that the ultimate truth is just another phone call and any failure to provide it is a dereliction of journalistic duty, and in today’s dwindling labor market too many reporters are eager to oblige them even without any sound proof. There are always the sympathetic portraits to write, which make for grim duty but contribute some small human aspect to the truth, as well as the celebratory tales of kindness and heroism, which are also a true part of the story and certainly merit celebration, but in his heart the typical reporter of our experience wants to be able to point a finger of blame.

All the better if one is able to point that dreaded finger at the preferred villains, which explains the eagerness of so many in the establishment media to note that the culprit might be a right-wing extremist. At this point it is quite true that it might be so, given that no definitive evidence has been uncovered to prove otherwise, but it would be just as true and just as pointless to note that it might also be a left-wing extremist or an Islamist extremist or any number of other sorts of extremists. The main evidence offered for the right-wing extremist theory is that the attacks occurred on the day that income taxes are due, but the more pertinent fact would seem to be that it occurred on the day of the Boston Marathon.

Other sources would prefer to implicate Islamist terrorists, which seems at least as plausible as any other explanation. There is some circumstantial evidence for the theory that is worth reporting, such as the similarity of the bomb to the improvised explosive devices that have been used against American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, but it does not constitute proof of anything. Should the theory be proved it will surely be followed by reminders that the work of a few extremists should not reflect poorly on a broader ideology, a point that those blaming right-wing extremism have not made on behalf of conservatism, but to much of the press Islamist terrorists are not the preferred villains.

Journalists needing something to write about as they await real information about the Boston Marathon bombings have no lack of material. The on-going debates about guns and illegal immigration have been so completely overlooked in the aftermath of Monday’s bombing that a savvy Senator might well choose to rush through something that would provoke widespread public outrage in different circumstances, and there’s a trial of an abortion doctor going in Philadelphia that much of the press has been looking for reasons to ignore.

The bombings in Boston are of the utmost importance, of course, but that’s all the more reason to wait until there are hard facts to report.

— Bud Norman

Sorrow and Speculation

As we write this little can be said with any certainty about the bombings at the Boston Marathon on Monday. Generally reliable sources report that at least three people were killed and as many as 130 more suffered injuries as serious as the loss of limbs, everything about the bombings points to an act of terrorism, and otherwise all that can be said without fear of eventual contradiction is that it is a horrible tragedy.

The lack of information has not stopped the usual speculation, of course, even though such tragedies are now common enough to have demonstrated that the early news reports are almost always proved wrong. Those inclined to suspect Islamist motives in these sorts of incidents did so again, but except for early and unconfirmed reports of a Saudi national being questioned there was no basis for the suspicion except its plausibility. Those inclined to suspect right-wing domestic terrorism also followed their inclinations, although there is no basis for the suspicion except that the bombings occurred on the day income taxes are due and the fact that there have been occasional cases of right-wing terrorism in the past. A few have suggested left-wing terrorism or the work of a murderous psychopath motivated by hatreds that have nothing to do with any political ideology, and a paranoid late-night radio program is currently considering conspiracy theories about a false flag operation, but there is nothing to be said for any of these notions except that they are all within the realm of possibility.

Such speculation is a normal reaction to tragedy, but it serves no purpose except for the false comfort offered by an explanation that aligns with a long-held belief. It is also a distraction from the sorrowful sympathy for the victims that is a more human reaction, and can exacerbate our usual political divisions and cloud an objective assessment of the facts as they gradually become known. Whatever the reasons for Monday’s horrible events, they will require a carefully considered response.

— Bud Norman